


Black On Black (Take It Off Like That)

by ShadowsLament



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Instant Attraction; Slow Burn, Kliego week, M/M, Not Adopted by Reggie AU, Telekinetic Klaus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-06 21:28:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18859459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowsLament/pseuds/ShadowsLament
Summary: A convenience store robbery triggers unlikely abilities Klaus has zero, zip, zilch idea how to deal with, but if being haunted by long-dead bookworms and moving stuff and things with just a thought and wave of the hand is the price he has to pay for meeting Diego—the gorgeous, black leather-clad, knife-wielding man apparently determined to be at Klaus' side every step of the way along his steep learning curve—well, the joke is on the universe, isn't it, because tokeepDiego, Klaus would do absolutely anything.





	1. Chapter 1

Decidedly used to the plummeting slip of sweat—the familiar path it took from nape to spine, how that bit of slick heat cleaved the stolen cotton of his cropped shirt to the taut stretch of his skin—for all that the sensation wasn’t new, Klaus didn't waste any time hustling down the corner store's far aisle to stick his head inside one of the freezer cases lining the back wall.

"Oh, sweet heavens to Betsy Ross, that is _sublime_.” Klaus peered through the door's fogged glass at his newfound best friend. His delightful dumpster mate of three days. The man he'd met over a veritable buffet of wilted lettuce leaves, browning apple cores, and tomatoes in such a state of pulp, they were truly, sadly more seed than meat. "Dave, my dearest, dashing treasure, as lovely as our time together has been, these fickle affections of mine have moved on. I'll be with this freezer for the foreseeable future. You understand, don't you?"

Dave snorted and, shaking his head, kept on considering the variety of jerky on a pegboard display. While Klaus hadn't been able to pry more than a few personal details from Dave's strong hands, he'd picked up on several habits, a small sum of quirks, and had quickly determined Dave was once military: an army boy, Klaus was almost certainly certain. One of the minor tells, Klaus thought, being Dave's ability to stomach vacuum dried meat and powdered food that would undoubtedly still be edible in the aftermath of an apocalypse.

"What've we got to work with, hmm? Thirty bucks? Forty?"

"Fifteen and change," Dave told him without checking to see if another five or ten had manifested in his pocket since that morning's round of busking. Or, rather, since Dave had mournfully played his harmonica on a sweltering sidewalk one block over while Klaus panhandled beside him, batting his eyelashes at those gents whose stares had snagged on the cut of Klaus' exposed hipbone, had dipped into the well between his collarbones, the right and perfect depth to collect come or to hold a thumbprint bruise like a dangling sapphire. "Which means we keep the empty calories to a minimum. Right, Klaus?”

“Mmm.” Klaus backed out of the freezer rattling a box of ice cream drumsticks. "Prote—"

"We've been over this," Dave relieved Klaus of his treat, replacing the box in the freezer, "just because something shares a name with, looks like, or tastes like chicken doesn't mean it _is_ chicken, and these don't _actually_ —“

"Have any protein to speak of, sure, whatever, but milk equals calcium." Holding up an arm, Klaus limply flexed his wrist. "See that? I'm one day without ice cream away from being stricken down by osteoporosis." He put on a pout and plead over steepled hands, "Pretty please?"

Dave sighed. "One. I saw singles in that case in the corner."

Leaving Dave with a smacking kiss on his dimpled cheek, Klaus darted over to the indicated freezer and planted both sneakers inside a red checkerboard square. He slid open the door, and it really was a toss up which was louder: the cooling system's hiss or the crack of old linoleum beneath his shifting feet. In the end, both played a losing game, the clear winner being the tail of bells clattering against the glass when the entrance door was pulled open by—Klaus was aware of the obscene noise he’d produced, but only after the fact, when he heard Dave respond in the form of another adorable snort.

With his wide eyes fastened on the store's latest occupant—a god-crafted specimen wearing black on black on black, and _indecently_ tight leather at that—Klaus’ fine motor skills chose that moment to split, the one lousy drumstick he was allowed suddenly slipping from his lax grip, heading towards the flo—“ _Shit_ , no, come back." Diving for it, Klaus narrowly caught his preferred empty calorie-rich meal before the cone became a mess of splintered pieces. "Phew."

"Good for you, man. Those things are impossible to eat after they break."

Absently, Klaus wondered if there was a law on the books criminalizing voices pitched to a certain depth, tones that rasped like a heavy five o’clock shadow against bare, sensitized skin. More specifically, voices that belonged to dark-haired men with lips so tempting, they put the lushest apple in Eden to shame.

“Oh, well.” Wandering deeper into the warm and welcoming dark of the eyes holding his, Klaus murmured, “That’s true, but if you're willing to really get in there with your tongue—"

The string of bells clattered again, and Black Leather's gaze had no sooner shifted to the door than he was moving to block Klaus with his body. 

"Everything you've got,” a man’s strident voice ricocheted down the aisle and was shortly followed by a dull thump, "goes in there. _Now_.”

Klaus leaned to the right to peek over a well-defined shoulder and caught a glimpse of the matte black gun barrel sighting down on the barely legal clerk shaking in his sneakers behind the counter. From there it was a quick trip up from the robber's tattooed wrist to the ski mask obscuring his face. 

The store was pretty well-kept, relatively clean. It wouldn’t be fair to have to bite the dust in it when there was no actual dust around to make his death even vaguely poetic, and yet it was exactly Klaus’ luck to be all _wrong place, wrong time_ , and with Da— _Shit_. Shoving up on his tiptoes, Klaus jerked his head to either side, searching the aisles for Dave's worn button-down, his charming chinos.

"Down." The command might've left those lips quietly, but it carried the same exquisitely sharp edge as the blade Klaus' gorgeous stranger had pulled from somewhere and held against his thigh. "Stay behind me."

"But my—" Klaus' throat abruptly closed, damming the rest of his words, his breath, as Dave silently stepped into sight, hugging the end of an aisle set back in the robber's blindspot. 

Black Leather seemed to consider Dave's contained position, his watchful and waiting posture. He angled his head towards Klaus and, keeping the volume down, asked, “Is he a cop?”

"Ex-military," Klaus whispered back, "I think.”

What happened then, Klaus blinked, and the scene broke into pieces. Into an awful mosaic. 

He saw the blue of the clerk’s eyes first, clouded with panic and drifting over to give Dave away. He watched the bark-brown leather of Dave’s thrift shop shoes move over the floor as he tore away from the safe distance he’d kept; saw the honey-hued skin of Dave’s hands reaching for the black barrel of that fucking gun. After that, it was the brilliant silver of the blade Black Leather threw that Klaus’ disjointed focus found, its polished steel glinting under the stark overhead light as it revolved hilt over tip on a trajectory inline with _both_ of the men grappling for the—“ _No_ ,” Klaus nearly choked on the word, terrified desperation forcing his hand up, and out, like that would accomplish any—

“What the fuck?” Black Leather breathed as his blade, swerving wildly off course, sank into an oversized bag of plump campfire marshmallows. “How the hell did you—“

A deafening pop shot through the store—echoing, echoing, _Christ_ , why wouldn’t it quit _echoing_?—before Klaus noticed—before he saw—And he was positive, he would’ve _sworn_ Dave’s shirt had been a midsummer sky blue when they’d walked in, not a violent red dripping from button to button, a glossy red turning too quickly to rust. 

“ _Dave_.”

The aisle wasn’t wide enough for two men to sprint down it side by side, but they managed until Klaus tripped, fell on his knees beside Dave. “No, _no_ , Dave. Dave.” Klaus wasn’t sure where to touch, what he should hold, and so his fingers fluttered, flit from Dave’s cheek to the button beneath the bullet-carved chasm in his chest, welling up with blood, _so much goddamned blood_ , to where Dave’s hand had fallen open on the floor. “Do you hear me?” Klaus demanded, and had to stop himself from grabbing Dave’s collar, from shaking an answer out of his mute mouth, his bloodstained lips. “ _No_. Not you. Not—”

“Hey, hey. Listen to me.” Black Leather knelt down on Dave’s opposite side. He reached for Klaus’ hand, forced him to accept the black tissue paper-thin sweater he’d stripped off and bunched up into a big if loose ball. “Take this,” he said firmly, “put pressure on it. Don’t let up.”

“Wait,” Klaus blurted out when his beautiful stranger, his would-be savior, stood, “where are you going?”

“After him, the fucker’s—“

“That fucker’s still got the gun, don’t you dare—“

“I know what I’m doing.” He nodded towards Dave. “Press harder.”

Klaus glanced down at his shaking hands, at the balled knit absorbing Dave’s blood, pitch black threads shading impossibly darker. He was certain it was impossible, that he couldn’t press any harder than he already was, but when Klaus looked up to tell Black Leather as much, the bells on the door were settling back into place, falling silent.

“I called,” the clerk said from where he hovered nearby, “the cops, fucking 911—Shit, is he—“

Klaus hissed, bore down on Dave’s chest with both hands. 

Once he started babbling—about a dream he’d had half a dozen or so times, the one with the dog and the hot air balloon and the ballasts of lube they’d dropped over Prague; about how he’d never eat another drumstick, ever, in the entirety of his whole life, if Dave would just fucking hold on, if he’d open his eyes so Klaus could show him exactly where and how Black Leather’s scars curved over that divinely sculpted face of his—once he had filled a minute with the sound of his own voice, Klaus had to fill another, and another, had to throw words at the wall to distract himself from just how many fucking minutes were piling up while Dave—

“Sir,” a woman with a police badge sitting shiny and bright on her belt laid a light hand on Klaus’ shoulder, “we need to get him to the hospital, okay, so you have to let go.” Sinking down on her haunches, she gently helped peel Klaus’ hands away from Dave’s chest but didn’t try to take the sweater, not after Klaus yanked it back, held the hopelessly stained material tight against his chest. “The EMTs are here, see? They’re going to put your friend in the ambulance waiting outside. Do you want to go with him? To the hospital?”

Nodding, Klaus held the sweater tighter and unsteadily surged to his feet, unwilling to let Dave out of his sight as the stretcher was rolled through the door. Outside, half-blinded by the afternoon’s uninterrupted sunlight, Klaus stumbled to keep up with the medics, made a hasty sweep of the street to find—“Black Leather.”

Easily pacing Klaus, Lovely Lady Badge looked at him sideways. “What was that?”

“He…he went after him.” Klaus licked his lips and tasted metal. The distinct tang of drying blood. “The man with the gun, the guy who shot my Dave. Black Leather left me to find the bastard who did this.”

“Black leather, huh?” The lovely lines of her face narrowed. Sharpened with apparent awareness. She cupped Klaus’ elbow, helped boost him into the back of the ambulance. “Did he have a scar over his ear? Pulled knives out of nowhere?”

Klaus blinked. “You know him?”

“Yeah,” she said, and sighed. “I know him.” 

As one of the medics pulled the door shut from the inside, as Badge braced a hand on either hip and turned to head back into the store, Klaus thought he heard her huff, “Goddamnit, Diego.”

* * *

Exiting the elevator on the seventh floor, Diego skirted medical beds bent in awkward angles of recline, sidestepped White Coats monitoring patients remotely, moving between pieces of equipment spitting out information in all these high-pitched chirps and chimes that would have driven him up a goddamned wall before the close of five minutes. At the nurse’s station, he leaned across the desk to—

“Hey, Black Leather,” Eudora strolled over, knocked an elbow against Diego’s arm, “word came down you hand-delivered the asshole responsible for the convenience store shooting to the station’s door. According to Beeman, you even tied the blood-soaked rope in a bow.”

Diego arched an eyebrow, ignored everything except, “Black Leather?”

Eudora tipped her head to the side, picked out the door at the far end of the hallway with her gaze before turning it back up to Diego. “That’s what Klaus of the pretty green eyes calls you, and from now on,” she said, familiar lips sloping, shaping a shit-eating grin, “that’s what I’m calling you.”

“Klaus?” An unusual name, but that seemed right. A good fit. A match of a kind for Diego’s atypical reaction to the man, so far off the mark from past experience. Not that he’d tried, but from minute one there’d been no denying that long, lithe body had an unbreakable hold on Diego’s thoughts, the memory of it framed by a citrus-colored crop top, pants a shade darker than all that pale skin, and so tight and low-slung they revealed as much as shielded. But what stirred him, what struck him hardest, were those green eyes. Christ, but he wanted another glimpse into that garden, wanted to spend some time in that bright haven. Even if—“H-he give a last n-name?”

Her grin didn’t slip at the sound of his stutter, if anything it dug in deeper, but whatever it was she thought she knew, Eudora kept it to herself. “First he told me it was Twist. Changed it to Potter. Then he said I should pick an orphan, any orphan, and bingo, we’ve got ourselves a winning last name.” Flipping open a pocket-sized pad of paper, Eudora grabbed a pen off of the desk, tapped the tip against a bold line of tidy writing. “The guy in the bed is Dave Katz. Army vet, wounded in the line of duty. He was shipped home after that, only he didn’t have one, according to Klaus, who, by the way, also appears to be homeless.”

Diego absorbed that bit of news like a sharp jab before he nodded, moved to—

“You know what I’m going to say, right?”

“A man was shot,” Diego bit out, “I watched it happen, and you think, what, I could just—“

“Could and should, Diego, those are two different things.” One step closer and Eudora hesitated. Her hand finally settled on his arm, but the touch was just pressure, absent of the deeper emotion it once held for both of them. “That fine line you’re walking is going to vanish one of these days.”

“Yeah, well, it was still there today.” Diego stepped away, called over his shoulder, “Be seein’ you, Patch.”

Keeping to the center of the hallway, preemptively avoiding a possible collision with any one of the nurses hustling between rooms with their heads down, Diego rolled both shoulders to release some of the tension that increasingly seemed to accompany time spent with Eudora. In front of the door she’d singled out, Diego inhaled deep, let that breath go as he crossed the threshold to enter the room.

Green eyes—shining through smudged makeup, through long lashes darkened by the same drying tears that shifted their shape from a delicate fan into spiked blades—lifted from the bed, latched onto Diego’s. 

“You…Hi…It’s Diego, isn’t it?” Klaus didn’t pause for confirmation, murmuring, “I promised I wouldn’t let go, otherwise your arms would be full of me right now. Eudora said you got him. The man who—I could kiss your lips numb for that reason alone.”

Diego’s stomach tightened, muscles contracting at the thought of having that body against his, those lips against his, but one look at the white-knuckled grip Klaus had on Dave’s hand and Diego simply pointed at the empty chair on the opposite side of the bed. “Mind if I sit?”

“Please.” Klaus slid forward on his own. “You look fine—and I do mean the kind of fine that requires a warning label, honestly, who allowed you out and about looking like that—but are you? That bastard didn’t—“

“I’m all good. What about him?” Diego took in Dave’s face; the component parts and sum of his features. Found no visible signs of his military service. No scars. Plenty of defined angles, and tanned, clean-shaven skin. “He’s going to pull through just fine, huh?”

“After scaring the bejeezus out of everyone. They said he flatlined on the table, shortly after—I guess I fell asleep around then, because I dreamed Dave—” Klaus still held Diego’s face in his brilliant, unblinking line of sight, but there was no way—no way—Klaus was actually seeing him. “He was in the waiting room with me, I think he was trying to say goodbye, but—That’s just…because he…” Klaus’ stare seemed to narrow, to focus, and then he really was looking at Diego. And smiling so wide, Diego figured he’d need an hour and then some to familiarize himself with the curve and depth of Klaus’ dimples. “Anyway, enough of my prittle-prattle. I’m sure you didn’t come here to listen to me go—“

“You want to talk,” Diego said, shifting to find a comfortable sweet spot on the unforgiving plastic chair, “I’m listening.”

Genuine surprise lit those eyes. Something else opened Klaus’ mouth, touched his lips with a slight tremble, held him there without a sound. He leaned forward, over the bed, and Diego felt magnetized, moving to mirror Klaus, to meet him half—

“Visiting hours will be ending in ten, gentlemen.”

Pulled up short by the announcement, Diego noticed the window—painted in gradient shades, darkening as day paced restlessly into night. He acknowledged the nurse with a brief nod, tried not to linger too long on the sweet press of Klaus’ lips to Dave’s forehead. It wasn’t a kiss, Diego realized, forcibly diverting his gaze. No, it was more than that; closer to a communion. A prayer for the man’s safekeeping in Klaus' absence. 

Diego abruptly stood, tipping the chair onto its back legs. “I’m go-going to—“

“Please,” Klaus pinned Diego in place with soft, uncertain eyes, “wait for me?”

Diego relaxed into that hushed request. "I'll be out there," he promised. "Take your time."  

In the hallway, Diego pocketed a hand, worked the reverse tanto blade he kept there open a bit. Centered himself on the drop point, the tip, while he stared blindly at one of the framed prints hanging on the wall. 

"Do you always mean what you say," Klaus asked from so near his side, Diego experienced the chill Klaus seemed to carry beneath his skin like it was his own, the sudden drop in temp raising bumps along his bare forearm to match those decorating Klaus' collarbones, "or did you see a button of mine—one, I might add, buried so deep I myself was unaware of its existence—and decide to really have at it?"

"It sounds to me like you've been with—Is that my—Patch didn't take that?" Considering the stranglehold Klaus had on Diego's ruined sweater, he decided Eudora must've known she'd be a fool to try. As it was, Klaus subtly shifted his arm back, concealing the bulk of the balled-up knit behind his slim body. "You can trash it—"

"You know, I don't think I can." That said, Klaus let the material loose, catching the sleeves to wrap and knot them around his waist. "Finders keepers."

"What set of rules are you—"

"There are rules?" Klaus huffed, but the affront it implied was belied by a one-sided grin. "Why does no one ever tell me these things?"

All the way along the lengthy bleached-white hallway, Klaus touched a fingertip to the closed doorways, recoiled from a few of the open ones, drawing closer to Diego. Their hands brushed, once or twice, left against right, Klaus' knuckles riding the ridge of Diego's, slotting together like their fingers might— _would_ —if Diego went and uncurled his, if Klaus accepted them. 

At the elevator, Diego punched the call button, peripherally aware of Klaus glancing over his shoulder, an unspoken worry cutting a slivered line down his brow. "He's going to be back on his feet in no time, you know that, right?"

"Hmm?" Distraction tugged at Klaus' mouth, lowering one corner; his teeth on the full curve of that bottom lip shaded the skin a distracting, slick pink. With his stare still reaching for Dave's room, Klaus murmured, "Who?"

The elevator doors retracted, revealing an empty car. Diego put his back to the far wall, but Klaus simply stood by the control panel, fingertips hovering over but not making contact with a single button. "Hey," Diego said, the narrow, enclosed quarters taking his volume and notching it up, "you hungry?"

Klaus reacted like he'd been smacked out of a trance, jolting, jerking around, eyes wide and clear and intent on Diego. "Always." 

"Get us a step closer to food then," Diego inclined his head towards the silver panel, all of the unlit buttons, "press one."

“Didn’t I—Oh. Right." Task completed, Klaus held himself still and straight, and after a silent moment asked, "Did you perhaps hurt him? Before you brought the bastard in."

The alley Diego had tracked that piece of shit to, when they'd finally left it, it was with a whole new set of fresh stains in place. Blood like rocks scattered on the ground; like splattered paint on brick walls, the dumpster. He hadn't unsheathed a single blade, just his fist. Took his time blunting more than a few of the man's edges. Kept at it until the fear in the eyes staring back at him blotted out Diego's memory of that same emotion etched on Klaus' face before Dave went down. Beeman had been straight with Eudora about the condition of the rope, must not have mentioned how hard the knots bit, though, or how Diego had tightened the binding to go for bone. 

"Yeah," Diego admitted, and didn't try to find the words to make sense of what it did to him, seeing the vicious, satisfied twist his answer brought to Klaus' lips, "I did."

Klaus left the elevator at Diego's side, seemed to trust Diego to lead him out of the hospital's maze of corridors, all of them a cold white, dotted with generic prints in muted colors where there should've been directional signs. A fucking arrow, some goddamned thing. After a few minutes and all the right turns they hit the exit, stepped out into a heat that wouldn't let up, no matter that the sun was done, down for the night's count.

Plucking at the crop top stuck to his skin by a chilled sweat Diego saw as a glistening sheen on his forehead, in the dampness flattening a few dark curls at his temple, Klaus hesitated, offered a vague wave and...set off towards the road. 

"Where are you going?" Diego called after him. He waited for Klaus' startled attention to double back, and gestured to one of the few cars still in the lot. "Our ride's this way." 

"Our...What?"

"You said you were hungry." Diego drifted in the direction of his parking spot, heard the shuffling sound of Klaus' inked-up sneakers over the pitted pavement, coming closer. "I was thinking Griddy's for donuts, unless you'd—"

"Ah, but there's the rub." Klaus stumbled to a stop near the trunk, turned out his pockets. “No matter the food, if it hasn't exceeded its expiration date, resulting in its immediate rehoming to a trash bag, barrel, or dumpster, I can't aff—"

"I asked," Diego said, pulling open the passenger side door, "so I'm paying."

He waited while Klaus studied him, vivid green eyes roaming from feature to feature, scar to scar, slipping lower to seek out the charge of his pulse, like that rhythm might reveal Diego's intentions. When Klaus strolled over, rather than fold himself into the seat, he paused with the door between them. "There's always a catch, but whatever yours is—“

“Nah, see, if there’s a catch it’s that you go ahead and eat as many donuts as you’d like. How many you think you can put away? Four, fi—” 

“A dozen, easy.” The moon held sway overhead, nearly full, brighter than the flickering fluorescent lights circling the lot on graffitied poles. Beneath it, Klaus was somehow paler but _luminous_ , an unreal thing slanting forward, the slender weight of his hand over Diego’s on the door frame all that anchored the moment in reality. “That’s it?” Black lashes lifted. Klaus looked at Diego like he was—“That’s your catch?”

“I wo-wouldn’t—“ Diego cut himself off, bought time by licking his lips, and Klaus saw, he watched, his own mouth parting, opening to give up a sound like smoke, soft and insubstantial, fading away before Diego was able to define it. Taking a long draft of warm air into his chest, Diego held it until the words he was aiming for steadied in his head, on his tongue. “I wouldn’t say no to more of your prittle-prattle.”

Klaus smiled, slowly. “Really.”

Diego nodded once. “Really.”

Finally, with that smile still in place, Klaus took the passenger seat and made it his, long limbs stretching where space allowed, folding where it didn’t. Diego shut the door, walked around the back, and through the rear window saw Klaus drag Diego’s coat up to the front from the backseat. He shoved his arms into the sleeves, burrowed into the material like it was a blanket, scenting the collar with his eyes shut, and that—Diego shook his head, opened the driver’s side door to slide behind the wheel.

Soon as the engine turned over, Diego shut down the AC.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Klaus said, referring to the coat with a flick of his fingertips, four out of five nails bearing polish that resembled a half-peeled tangerine. “It was freezing in there. The number of patients suffering from hypothermia must account for half the population of that place. Did I say half? That’s probably lowballing it.”

It had been a little cooler inside than out, nothing more drastic than a difference of maybe ten degrees, but there was no point in mentioning that to the man shivering in the sanctuary of Diego’s coat. Instead, Diego rolled down his window, let the interior fill with seething summer heat, and drove out of the lot.

He glanced sideways at his passenger. “The AC’s more reliable than the heater, but if you—“

“No, this is good, it's lovely.” Klaus rolled down his own window, cupped his hand like a swell of water, mimicked an undulating wave pushing through the air current cutting around the car. Several seconds later, with his gaze trained on the passing sights and his head pillowed on the backrest, he said in an almost inaudible voice, “It's better than that."

Content to let the quiet go unbroken, to give Klaus the warmth of his coat and car, Diego eased up on the gas. Drew out the ride as long as he was able, deliberately taking a left turn where he should've gone right, rolling to a stop at yellow lights. Possibly Klaus caught on, realized, his slight smile indicated as much, but the knowledge only seemed to make him settle deeper into the seat. To relax more.

After everything that'd happened with Klaus'—with Dave—

Tangerine-tipped fingers tapped the back of the hand Diego had on the wheel. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah." The road ahead was clear; Diego indulged in a long look over at Klaus. "Why?"

Klaus shrugged. Or Diego thought that was what happened; the obscuring bulk of the coat made it anybody’s guess. "You were frowning. That usually happens within five minutes of meeting me, not an hour later. I thought I was safe."

"You are." Diego pulled into Griddy's lot and parked in front of a trio of out of service phone booths. Klaus met him on the curb, still wearing the coat, both hands tucked deep in the pockets. Inside, taking stock of the selection on the slanted shelves, Diego went for his wallet. "Know what you want?"

A glancing touch to the trailing edge of his scar turned Diego’s head. 

Klaus murmured, “Do I ever.”

“What can I get for you, boys?” A woman—Agnes, going by the letters stitched into her dress—arched an expectant eyebrow, pen poised over paper to record their order. “If you need another minute that’s—“

“No, no, I’m good to go.” Leaning on the counter, reeling off a list of twelve different donuts, Klaus tugged napkin after napkin out of the holder. Folded one into a boat. Or some kind of hat. And while Agnes repeated back his selections, turned another into a plane. "Exactly right, Agnes dear. Now for Diego's."

“Coffee,” Diego calculated the cost for everything, put down the cash to cover it, “and one of the day's special.” 

"Have a seat. I'll get that out to you in a jiffy."

Klaus took off for the corner table, scraping a chair out from beneath it, sprawling across the cracked cushion. He didn't move when Diego claimed the opposite chair except to nudge one sneaker between Diego's boots. "Thank you," he said, "for nobly donating to the keep-Klaus-fed cause."

"Patch, she, ah, she mentioned you don't have a—"

"A place to crash? To call home sweet home? The lovely lady spoke true." He went for the shining silver napkin holder beneath the window and pulled out a thick stack he began to fold one-by-one into shapes Diego had to squint to recognize. When Agnes came over with their order, Klaus accepted his box with a wink, a delighted, "You're a marvel, Agnes," and before Diego popped the lid on his coffee, Klaus had reduced the count of donuts to ten. "Do you know how long it's been since I've had one of these all to myself, meaning sans someone else's dental imprints? No? Me neither. _Christ on a cracker_. I forgot how good they are when they're under a day old."

Klaus ate with unabashed relish, licking cinnamon and brown sugar from his fingertips, taking the full thrust of his thumb into his mouth to suck off the sweet custard cream dripping to coat his knuckle. After watching four more donuts disappear, devoured in no time, Diego remembered his own. 

Another one polished off, Klaus wiped glaze from the corners of his mouth, the strip of his goatee, using a mangled paper crane, one of his more obvious origami attempts. Then, then he made good on the promised prittle-prattle. “Where to start, where to—Oh, I know…”

Time unspooled between Klaus’ stories, each one tightening the man’s hold on Diego, towing him across the city from mostly-hidden haunts and supposedly sweeter-smelling alleyways to dumpsters known to contain finer delicacies. From parks canopied by widely and wildly blooming oleander trees to silent, sheltered corners of the public library. Last, to a flophouse apparently packed in with old-hat panhandlers, retired prostitutes, and blue-eyed cats that crooned like Sinatra used to in his cigarette smoke-hazed younger years. 

“Sometimes they sound more like Dean than Frankie. But that's really only when they're unreasonably deep in their cups. Make that saucers," Klaus amended. "Actual bone china. For the cats. And occasionally Delaney, who, by the way, would rim absolutely anyone for a dollar but won't drink directly from a whiskey bottle if the seal's been popped. So," Klaus took a breath, trapped both hands beneath his legs, "had enough?"

"Of what?" 

"Me," Klaus said simply.

Diego replied in kind, ”No." Pushing aside his crumb-dotted paper plate and the empty coffee cup he hardly remembered touching after taking off its lid, Diego braced both elbows on the table. Bounced a leg beneath it. "Can I—Would you be okay with a couple of questions?"

"Sure." His tone was level, but Klaus sank deeper into the coat, pulling it across his chest like armor or a shield. "Shoot."  
   
“When’s your birthday?"

"Shit, Diego, hit me with the hard ones straight out of the gate, why don't you." Again, it was open to interpretation, but Klaus appeared to shrug before he said, "I don't actually know. It might not mean anything, but I've always thrown myself a rager in October, on the first."

"What about the year?" Diego asked, "Do you know that?"

"Best guess or should I flatter myself? Eh, thirty's not even ancient-adjacent, so best guess it is, and that would be '89. Why?" Klaus asked with a smile. "Already have a present for me in mind? You're a certifiable stunner in black, but for the record, a dark red bow would probably knock me out."

Diego sat back, put an index finger on the knife folded in his pocket, used its familiar outline—tracing opposite but equal lines, two sharp curves, over and over—to settle the hastened beat of his heart. To anchor him while he was in his head, tugging on the threads of scattershot thoughts, getting them in some kind of damn order. 

A pair of headlights flooded the window, spotted with the remnants of a there-and-gone rain—

"Diego?"

“I’m here…I’m trying to…” Diego stopped and sighed and eased into the verdant garden of Klaus’ eyes. “Look, I know how this is going to sound, and you don’t know me to judge if I’m high off my ass or—“

“I know what that looks like, what it feels like,” Klaus said with his head tipped to a curious, questioning degree. “You’re not.” 

“No, I’m not,” Diego agreed and, with the entirety of Klaus’ attention in his hands, decided to just spit out the rest. Get to the point he’d been dwelling on for hours, would’ve brought up at the hospital except—“Back at the store, that blade I threw, it shouldn’t—I don’t miss my mark, Klaus. Ever. That’s a provable fact. But you shoved out your hand, you said no, and you saw what happened. You know where that blade ended up.”

“Skewering several marshmallows, yes, and there we were without a fire to toast them over.” Klaus’ brow pinched. “But what does that have to do with—“

“You thought my knife was going to hit Dave, right?”

“I…Change the scene a tad and anyone looking at them might’ve assumed they were fucking. They were _that_ close, so, yeah, I worried it might, but—What on earth makes you think I—“

“It’s never happened before?”

Klaus laughed, breathily, buoyed up by something close to disbelief. “Has _what_ happened before? Have I moved shit with…with my mind? A hand gesture?”

Diego picked up one of Klaus’ folded napkins, tested the twin tips he figured were the ears of something quick and clever, something like Klaus, able to back away right before Diego’s eyes, seemingly without making a move. “It’s not impossible.”

“And I’d be the last one to use the word, but, Christ, Diego—“

“I said I know how it sounds, didn’t I?” Diego caught the sharp echo of his voice, an edge honed by frustration over his own shitty handling of the situation up to that point. He saw it cut Klaus before his gaze shuttered, turned to the window. “I’m fu-fucking this u-up, and I’m so-sorry for—” Gritting his teeth against the recurrence of that goddamned stutter, not caring that the table’s ledge was going to leave a lash on his abdomen, Diego pressed forward. Laid his palm on Klaus’ arm, folded over the other in front of his chest. “If you want to forget the last five minutes, Klaus, then, okay, I will too. But if you’re willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, hard as that may be—“

“Wait, just…wait a tick. You’re _truly_ suggesting I might be, what, telekinetic? Something like that?”

“Something like that, yeah.” Hyperaware of Klaus’ fingertips idling over the peaks of his scarred and recently abraded knuckles, Diego said, “Believe it or not, it’s about the only thing that makes sense. I’ve gone over it and over it, and…There are a few others like me, with…skills, I guess, abilities that are unbelievable on paper, but I told you I can prove it. So can they.”

Klaus considered that, maybe weighed it against—“Am I wrong in thinking there was an implied question in there?”

 _Quick_ , Diego thought, smiling slightly, _and clever_. He tipped his hand to off-balance Klaus’ cool fingers, to catch them and warm them. “We’ve got this place we use mainly for training, but Luther and Five live there, and I’ve been known to crash in one of the spare bedrooms now and then. You could come with me sometime, check it out? I could show you what I can do—“

He didn’t choke, not exactly, but Klaus did straighten up suddenly, his fingers skidding, shoving deeper into Diego’s hand. “Show me wh—God, yes, _please_.“ Diego’s eyes widened; Klaus’ narrowed. “You meant with the knives and the not missing targets thing, didn’t you? You did.” He slumped back in the seat, set about stroking his fingers in and out of Diego’s grip. Slowly, and repeatedly. Relentlessly. “We’re on the same page now, carry on.”

“That…” Diego resisted the urge to close his eyes, to make some kind of feral noise, as Klaus continued that maddeningly slow push and pull, the pads of his fingertips occasionally catching on one or two of Diego’s calluses on the upstroke. “That was about it.” His breath shuddered. With one more thing to say, he had to stop to swallow. “Will you think about it?”

“With that face? Asking me in that voice? You’re not even trying to play fair.”

“Oh,” Diego waited until Klaus’ fingers were fully inside his hand to close his own around them, squeezing, yielding, clutching that much tighter each time, on every compression, finally pulling something like a pant from Klaus’ slick, parted lips, “ _I’m_ not?”

“I’ll come,” Klaus breathed, “fuck, of course I will.”

“That’s it, baby.” The words registered with Diego too late. “I—”

Next to the table, a throat softly but decidedly cleared. “I’m, ah, going to be closing up shortly, boys.” Klaus’ blown eyes reluctantly slid away from Diego’s; they looked up at Agnes in tandem. Diego tracked her hand, fluttering up from those letters embroidered in white on the pink dress she wore to her flushed throat. “Is there anything else I can—“

“No, ma’am,” Diego told her, withdrawing his hand, gathering up the plate and cup before Agnes could reach for them. “We’ll clean up, get out of your hair.”

The radio station— _had it been playing the whole time?_ —piped into the shop through speakers stashed in each of its corners switched songs. Went back three decades to a sax-laced ballad, one that Klaus seemed to know well enough, humming it beneath his breath while he swept crumbs and the paper zoo he’d created into his empty box, all while looking through his lashes at Diego. Then he was up, stopping at the trash bin and pushing through the door before Diego was out of his seat.

Scrambling, Diego dumped his own trash, shoved through the exit. He caught the tail of his coat, reeled Klaus back a step. “Are you always going to be walking away from me?”

“If you’re always going to come after me.” Klaus kicked one sneaker through a shallow puddle, stepped up until the water-speckled toe was tip to tip with Diego’s boot. “Thanks for the food.” He lifted his eyes from Diego’s lips. “For your company.” Replaced his gaze with the tip of his thumb and tugged on the lower curve, letting Diego have a taste of the sugar that clung to Klaus’ skin. “And for your coat, which I’m keeping. At least for the time being.” Dropping his hand, holding Diego’s eyes, Klaus backed away, put an empty parking space between them. “See you around, Diego.”

“Wha—When? Klaus?” When that earned him no answers, Diego tried, “Let me give you a ride. Wherever you—“

Klaus shook his head. “I can’t do that,” he called back from halfway across the lot, “I already don’t want to go, and I’ve gotta get back to Dave.”

Diego frowned. “But the hospital’s…” 

He didn’t bother finishing the sentence—Klaus had hustled across the street, coat flapping—but he did wait exactly where he was, next in line beside a dinged-up mailbox and a few graffitied newspaper automats. Diego stood there until Klaus’ silhouette was indiscernible, until the shadows that had drawn back to let him by returned to drape the sidewalk. He stood there with his hands fisted and no one to fight; with the man he wanted to hold onto heading towards someone else.

* * *

Hospital pillows, Klaus decided, attempting once again to plump the three behind Dave’s head and back, were reason enough to sue for malpractice. For gross negligence, or whatever, for _something_. As opposed to Dave’s three nights, Klaus had borrowed a spare from another bed just that one time, and he’d woken up in an _agony_ of knotted, pissy muscles. After that, if given a choice between self-flagellation or borrowing one of Dave’s so-called pillows again, Klaus would opt every time to fold Diego’s coat beneath his head. To tuck it into his arms. Which was exactly what he’d done. Over those two nights, assailed by Diego’s scent, Klaus had slipped deep into humid dreams of dark eyes, firm hands, the texture of callused fingers, those lips devastating Klaus’—

“You should stop avoiding him, Klaus.” Like he was Icarus-close to the sun, the very thing responsible for the room’s unholy level of brightness, Dave narrowly squinted, tilted his head on the pile-up of pillows to find Klaus’ perch in front of the window. It was touching, really, considering Dave was risking momentary blindness in the process. More than once that morning alone, Klaus had offered to pull the curtains, had practically begged Dave to let the thick scraps of material do their job already, but, no, he’d been denied. “You’ve told me how many times now that you want to have his babies—“

“His demigod children.”

“But you hide in the closet with the bedpans—“

“For your information, it was a singular bedpan, Dave, and it was good company.” The narrow confines of the room’s hard plastic visitor’s chair occasionally defied Klaus’ expert ability to contort himself into mostly comfortable positions, but he adjusted as best he could between its bruising arms, and watched as relief cascaded across Dave’s expression. Settled in to hold the pose for hours or until the sun dipped, Klaus added, “I might have appropriated it for Delaney. And what a toss up that was, who was happier, I mean, him or the cats—“

“Klaus.” Dave reached for Klaus’ hand, held it with returning strength. “Since you’ve gone AWOL every time he’s turned up, leaving me to talk to him—“

“And you always do, because you’re the single most darling man, but also you’re welcome,” Klaus said. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed the dazed look on your face after he leaves. I did tell you he was—“

“My point,” Dave squeezed Klaus’ fingers, “is so what if you can’t do it? The telekinesis thing. Diego’s not going to care.”

“You can’t…That’s not…” Klaus wrapped his arms around his knees. “You know, I’ve never actually met a risk I wasn’t willing to take. Until now.”

The length of time it had taken Dave to resurface, to fully return to the land of the living, it had to be filled, and Klaus had quickly exhausted the hospital’s options. Those things he could do without getting kicked to the ambulance-clogged curb. Verbally booted out on his ass. He’d completed every crossword and word search in every newspaper and magazine on offer, in ink no less, and bitten his nails to the quick while poring over the inane articles therein not once but twice. He’d played tic tac toe against himself, turned those sheets of paper into the skulk of foxes decorating Dave’s room. He’d talked to people who looked half-dead, who probably shouldn’t have been out of bed let alone their rooms. He’d given up on the television’s few reliable channels, swiped containers of half-eaten jello, paced, stood at the window playing I spy until his little eye spied a dark-haired man so achingly attractive, so startlingly sweet, Klaus knew it was going to happen, that he was going to—

Then, after all that was done and there was nothing else at hand, he’d had no choice but to fall back on his own thoughts.

And those, they unwound like a film reel repeating the same scene. He was unquestionably there again, beneath Griddy’s dull ivory lights, surrounded by yellow stools and blood orange seats, by brown laminate-topped tables that had seen better days and polished silver napkin holders. He could almost smell coffee brewing, raspberry jelly and sugar sweetening the air. And Diego, it was like Diego had never stopped looking at him with rapt attention, the way he had while Klaus spun his stories. How closely he’d listened, Jesus Christ, Klaus only needed one other finger to count how many people had done that in his lifetime, who’d let Klaus speak uninterrupted, who didn’t seem bothered or put off by anything that came out of his mouth—no matter how outlandish, dirty, or borderline damning it was.

The thought was paralyzing—the idea debilitating—that he might disappoint either of the two men who, in the short time he’d known them, had shown Klaus what kindness—what a measure of respect—looked like.

Swallowing thickly, Klaus said, “If I can’t do it he might—“

“Say it’s no big deal, thanks for trying.” Diego stepped into the room, transferred the bursting plastic bag he carried to the table wheeled up alongside the bed. “Maybe next time listen to Dave. He was right, I—“

“Exactly how long were you out there?” Klaus asked, possibly louder than necessary, but then his pulse was going off like the fucking finale of a Fourth of July fireworks show, so he could hardly be certain. Or blamed, if the volume of his voice was indeed pitched in the direction of overcompensation. “And what’s in the bag?”

“I didn’t know which kind of jerky you preferred,” Diego told Dave, “so there’s a bunch of it in there. Dark chocolate, too, and on the off chance you actually meant it when you said you missed having raisins, I got a few boxes.” He rooted down to the bottom of the bag and—“This is for you.”—tossed what he’d pulled out to Klaus. 

Klaus looked up from the ice cream drumstick in his hand to the jerky spilling out of the bag Dave tugged closer. Felt his throat tighten, like he might—“Excuse me,” he said and stood in a hurry, “just one moment, yeah? Yeah.”

Force of habit nearly saw Klaus into the closet, but at the last second he course corrected, swung open the door concealing the for-patient-use-only bathroom. With it shut tight, muffling Dave and Diego’s voices, Klaus turned on the tap. He splashed blistering water on his face. Slapped his cheeks. Risked a glance in the mirror. “Shit,” he said to his reflection, “you gotta get back out there. Eat the damn ice cream that beautiful man bought you. Stop making Dave carry your sorry ass.” 

Cutting the water, yanking on the lapels of Diego’s coat, Klaus nodded at himself. Threw open the door and strolled into the room to immediately have both Dave’s and Diego’s eyes hone in on him.

“Everything all right?” Dave asked just as Diego said, “You okay, Klaus?”

Klaus startled hard enough to shed his skin when the nurse suddenly there at his elbow chimed in with, “Now there’s a problem I’d like to have.” She spared Klaus from having to respond by bustling around him to get to the bed, but fast as she was, Diego was faster, hiding the bag of smuggled-in snacks before it was seen and potentially confiscated. “I’m going to have to borrow Mister Katz for awhile.”

“Why?” Klaus asked, his heartbeat jerking reflexively. “Is something—”

"It's nothing like that," she said, adding several incomprehensible notes to the whiteboard on the wall, "just a few standard tests. You've been cooped up in here for days, go out, he's in good hands."

"But—"

"Klaus, go, take the money from—It's in my pocket." Dave nodded towards his chinos, folded neatly on the windowsill. That sun-blighted squint was back when he turned to Diego. "Would you do me a favor?" 

Diego didn't hesitate. "What do you need?"

"I'd appreciate it if you made sure he eats."

"If Klaus is on board with it," Diego said, "I've got a place in mind."

The short sleeve of Dave's hospital gown had been worn and washed so many times it was see-through thin, spider-web threads along the hem giving way to the worrying sweep of Klaus' fingers. Disinfectant blue, the gown smelled as sterile as its color suggested, in spite of absorbing Dave's sweat, and—"Please," Dave quietly said, the warm press of his palm putting a stop to Klaus' fidgeting, "I'd feel better about you being here around the clock if you took a few hours, maybe started on making those ba—"

“You and your wholesome face and that fresh mouth, my darling, are a menace." Before he could talk himself out of making good on Dave’s request, Klaus swooped down to catch his cheek with a light kiss, and thought he saw Diego look away, shift his weight towards the door. "Don't go anywhere while I'm gone."

"I wouldn't," Dave promised. "Now get out of here." A gentle push to get Klaus going, then Dave offered Diego a smile. "Thank you."

"Any time."

Walking out of the room, down the hall, Klaus shivered through a keen sense of deja vu—

"There's a sweater in the car with your name on it."

“Aren't you a—" A woman clutching her stomach with ashen hands stepped into Klaus' path. He bumped into Diego to get out of the way, felt a steadying hand cup his elbow, and absently patted Diego's chest in thanks. It was just—Up close, it was impossible to miss that it was blood staining her hospital gown, the tear tracks draining towards her mouth. Whatever she was whispering, though, Klaus wasn't able to make it out beyond—

"Klaus? You with me?" 

"Hmm?" 

"I asked if you were good with checking out the Academy today.” Diego moved down one corridor after another, all of them exactly the same, with walls like a blizzard: white and cold and disorienting. Klaus paid little attention to this turn, that turn, trusted Diego to lead him out. “We can grab lunch there. Grace makes the best—"

"Maybe I should go back up?" Outside, Klaus’ sun-dazed eyes returned to the hospital's brick exterior, climbed to the string of seventh floor windows. Was she still—"She might have been looking for a nurse."

"Who?"

"The woman in the hall," Klaus said, "on Dave's floor. She really shouldn’t have been out of bed.”

Diego looked up, then back at Klaus, his brow pinched. "I didn't—But if you wanna go back—"

Klaus flapped a hand. "No. No, she's probably all set by now. Let's go." He made a beeline for Diego's car, was barely inside before he relieved the back seat of the promised sweater and hastily pulled it on over his whisper-thin button-down, covering the shirt's riotous, jewel-dark blooms. He slipped back into Diego's coat, got the zipper up, and remembered—"Who's Grace?" 

"She's...Grace is kind of the caretaker of the group I told you about. The mom. She makes sure everyone's fed, patched up when necessary, cleans the place when Luther and Five can't be bothered." Diego eased out of the lot and onto the congested street. "You'll like her."

Klaus fished his ice cream out of one of the coat's pockets. “And what can _they_ do? Luther and Five?"

"Luther is strong. Knock down the Eiffel Tower strong." Diego glanced over. Grinned. "You've got some of that on your chin." Klaus saw his knuckles whiten on the wheel, wondered if Diego would've reached over, thumbed off the bit of chocolate shell stuck to Klaus’ goatee, if their car hadn't been bumper to bumper with some fancy foreign hybrid. "Five can…He can…”

“Well don’t stop there.”

"He, ah, he can teleport. Through space _and_ time.” Diego pressed on, quickly. "Then there's Allison and Vanya. Allison's got something like the power of suggestion going for her, and Vanya, she can manipulate sound waves, does some serious damage when she wants to. Don't know if they'll be there, but you'll meet Luther, probably Five."

Teleportation. _Right_. Sound wave manipulation. _Why not?_ That was totally—No, not going there, Klaus decided. Later was as good a time as any to mull over everything Diego had just floated by him. Maybe after he saw it for himself, that might work. He might have a shot in hell of wrapping his head around it then. Finishing off the cone, he asked, "Did you mention me?"

"I told them I'd met someone, that I’d be bringing you by—"

"But about the—"

"I don't give a shit if it comes to nothing, Klaus. I mean it," Diego said in a voice so resolute, Klaus was inclined to believe him. "There's no pressure here. We'll try it out when you're ready, and the others are going to leave it alone in the meantime. If they don't, you tell me. Okay?"

Klaus tucked his chin into the coat and, drawing up both legs, burrowed a little deeper in the seat. Put the ice cream wrapper against his knee to press the creases out, to distract himself from the sight of the tree-lined streets Diego navigated. From the buildings getting bigger by the block, each one wrapped in an ornate black wrought-iron fence, roofs cornered by classical cornices in the shape of sirens and lions and— _Jesus fuck_ —what was he doing—

"Stop." 

When Klaus checked, Diego's expression was neutral. "Wha—"

"Stop thinking you have no business being here.”

“I don’t,” Klaus muttered around a ragged fingernail, “for oh so many reasons.”

“Klaus, none of this—Five inherited the Academy, okay? He inherited his money. Maybe he’s made more, but he's smart about it. Keeps it quiet. Allison’s doing fine,” Diego checked the rearview, switched lanes, “but the rest of us get by. If I had cash to toss in the fire you think I’d be driving this?”

“What’s wrong with this good old girl?”

Diego snorted. “Nothing, she treats me right, gets me where I need to go. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t slide behind the wheel of something else every now and again.” The blinker signaled a right turn, the car prowling down a long, long alleyway. That, at least, was familiar, even if the mansion looming aside it was massive. Imposing. “Look, the truth is, Klaus, I mop the floors of a boxing gym in trade for use of their boiler room. That’s my home sweet home. It stinks of sweat and oil and buckets of bleach, and I—“

“You had me at _look_. When do I get to visit?”

With the car parked a few feet ahead of an oversized green dumpster slathered in stickers, Diego put his back to the door, considered Klaus. Probably trying to root out sarcasm that wasn't there. To determine if Klaus was poking at him. Having come to a conclusion, Diego said, “Any time you want.”

Klaus smiled, knew it was soft, that curve, knew it was giving him away. "Th— _Fuck a duck_ ,” Klaus breathed, swiveling in his seat, wide eyes locked on the source of the strident knocking on his window. "Wh—"

Diego sighed. "That would be Luther."

“ _Someone_ went to the Goblin Market for muscles. How much do you think he paid for all those?" The man outside his door—Luther—stepped back, unaware or uncaring of the sweat that glued the thin tank he wore to his chest and abdomen, how little his joggers left to the imagination. "Should I—"

"He'll just wait there until we do, so, yeah. Let's go."

Making sure his feet were beneath him before he stood, that he didn't spill out of the car in an impossible tangle of his own legs and Diego's coat, Klaus carefully sidled up to stand shoulder to shoulder with Diego, smack dab in front of Luther. The channel of low, heated words passing between the two men abruptly cut out at his appearance. And, curious as Klaus was about most everything, he found he didn't really give a shit about the nature of the argument. Not with how insistently his fingers itched to soothe the rigid line of Diego's shoulders, the tension tightening that orgasm-inducing jaw of his.

Or, Klaus thought, it might've been a matter of wanting to sucker punch the man responsible for Diego's closed-off expression, his defensive stance.

Klaus looked up—and up—at Luther. "Not a single merchant at the market was willing to sell you manners, huh, or perhaps a smidgen of charm?" Klaus clucked his tongue. "Just as well. Why waste something so rare and precious?" His smile slipped as his stare hardened. "If there's a problem—"

"No problem," Luther said, but he was blinking, blinking, seemingly taken aback. Or confused. ”Diego didn't tell us he was bringing someone—Klaus—you—by today, that's all." 

On that note, Luther dragged a forearm through the copious sweat on his forehead, refit his earbuds, and without another word or backwards glance, walked away. 

"As first impressions go," Klaus said, "I think I nailed that one."

"Far as I'm concerned," Diego led the way to the door Luther had used, "you did." 

It was a new experience for Klaus, strolling through a room in the throes of such an impressive identity crisis. The way he saw it, it was going for one part kitchen, one part abandoned deli, two parts rumpus room. Framed by white subway tiles, the space was stuffed with a hodgepodge of furniture, games, and defunct freezer cases on fraying Abyssinian rugs. On the table, a jar of peanut butter stood open beside a bag of marshmallows, slices of white bread on a plate, and on the counter by the sink was an oversized coffee mug stamped with the words _PROPERTY OF THE COMMISSION_.

Out of the room and looking over his shoulder to determine if someone had indeed created a doorway by means of bomb detonation, as appearances clearly suggested was the case, Klaus bumped into Diego when he stopped on the stairs.

“About before, Luther…He’s—“

“A socially awkward animal? Too big for his britches? And if you think I mean a giant dick, Diego, what type of person do you think I am, because you’d be correct.”

Nothing came to mind, because there wasn't a single thing Klaus wouldn't do in the future to see the slow ascent of Diego's sly grin again. Not a goddamn single thing—Klaus was positive—that he would not do to be allowed to kiss the knife-tip curve of those lips. To taste the shallow dimple it carved into the stubble shading Diego's skin darker. "You got his number pretty quick."

Klaus swallowed, ventured, "I take it you and the big guy don't always get along?"

"Nope, not since day one. I was hoping our shit wouldn't come down on you, but—"

“I’m not here for him,” Klaus said, and shrugged, “I don’t give a flying fig about what he thinks of me or anything else.” He pointed back at the unusual doorway. “Bomb? Jackhammer gone rogue? What happened there?”

“Vanya happened.”

“Did she? That is...something to remember.”

With the stairs behind them, they cut through the widest, most darkly opulent entrance hall Klaus had ever set eyes on, guarded on both sides by mar—Cocking his head, Klaus didn't exactly have to strain to hear the music suddenly seeping through the walls and floor overhead, the opening church bell notes ringing out loud and clear, the song's synths enfolding them, filling the entire place before the drumbeat—"Oh, goody, we're to be treated to the best of the eighties with lunch, are we?"

"It's possible," Diego slid open a set of doors on the far side of the foyer, “it’s also how you know Five's had a bad day. Consider it an early warning system."

The next room he entered, Klaus wouldn't have been shocked to find out some natural history museum was missing an exhibit hall, that it had been carved out and installed in the Academy piece by piece, one stuffed aardvark by one taxidermied antelope at a time. Factor in the bookshelves and, okay, probably the live-ins simply thought of it as their library.

After an acclimating moment or four, Klaus' roaming stare stuck on a woman silently stoking a fire to life in one of the room's several marble-encased hearths. Decked out in a dress that would do any fifties housewife proud, wearing heels, not a single blonde hair out of place, and with a perfectly applied red lip, she was—

"Grace?" Diego smiled in an open, unfettered way that suggested a deep level of comfort with the beautiful woman who turned immediately, eagerly, at his call. “This is Klaus.”

Her eyes lit up as bright as blue optic fibers, Grace came forward, one slim hand extended. "It's wonderful to finally meet you, Klaus." The cadence of her voice was...off, somehow...it was lovely and rich, Klaus would never suggest otherwise, but the tone didn't dip or lift over the words. "Ever since Diego told me about you, how cold you get, I've made sure to keep a fire going in the room in case you decided to visit. If one isn't enough, you just let me know." 

"It's probably already stifling in here, I wouldn't want to—"

"None of that now. Your comfort is as important as anyone else's under this roof. Are you hungry?" Whatever she made of Klaus' expression proved to be answer enough, because she smiled wider, even more sweetly, and lightly touched his forearm on her way to the door. "I'll have lunch ready in a wink, dear, and you'll eat it here, where it's warm."

Klaus closed his mouth after she'd vanished in a swish of pale pink skirts and a swirl of pretty floral perfume. "Once I figure out what just happened, I'm going to love the stuffing out of her. Do you think she'd let me have a look in her closet?"

“Yeah, she would. And I can see now I might regret you two meeting," Diego said, but the laugh lines around his eyes poked holes in his own theory. "You wanna have a seat, or—"

"I tried to do it," Klaus blurted out, “to move stuff. Things. With my mind and a flick of the wrist that, I have to tell you, is usually orgasmically effective.” Attention turned to the nearest table, Klaus straightened an urn, booped the nose on a random feather-bedecked mask. "In retrospect, it was probably a good thing nothing came of it in Dave’s room. How would I have explained a concussion to the nurses?”

“There’s no timetable on this, Klaus,” Diego said. “We can eat, listen to whatever Five decides to play next." He gestured to the abundant bric-a-brac, the books, to the embarrassment of riches in the form of all that marble. "If you think this room is something, just wait. A tour of any one of the other floors could easily stretch to an hour. And if none of that sounds good, we could ask Grace about her clothes."

"If I promise this one time to be gentle will you let me pinch you?" Klaus asked after a second or two, after accepting that he wasn't going to take the out—any one of them—Diego was offering. "I'm in my head, I know all too well I'm real, but you—"

Diego huffed a laugh. "Tell me again who's setting up who to be a disappointment?"

"Here we are, boys." Grace swayed into the room carrying a large tray bearing several plates, two glasses of water, and one teacup. Klaus hurried over, helped unload the small feast onto one of the low tables centered between twin leather sofas. "Eat what you like and I'll wrap the rest. Don’t you think Dave is ready for a break from hospital food?”

“Oh, Earth angel, I do believe he is.”

Diego finished spreading out the food, accepted the pair of cloth napkins Grace slipped from a pocket hidden in one of the skirt’s many folds. “Thanks, Grace.”

“You’re welcome, sweetheart.”

“What happened there?” Diego asked after Grace had gone, after Klaus had watched him watch her exit the room. The butter knife Diego had palmed flashed silver in streaming sunlight, its flat edge chiming against the side of the pot of plum jam Klaus had unknowingly shoved his thumb into, distracted into a state of stupidity by an endearment he himself had once used on a sewer grate. Diego’s grin flashed like the blade, then, forge-hot, teasing. “You need help getting it out or what?”

“Believe it or not,” Klaus said around his thumb, the jam thick and tasty on his tongue, “this happens more often than you’d imagine." He took one of the napkins, tucked a deep purple sugared stain into its corner. "Hey, so, I wouldn't dream of prying, I was just wondering, you know, if you and Grace are—“

“Engaged in a pseudo-Oedipal relationship? You might think so, but no.” A dark-haired boy Klaus judged to be around maybe thirteen, fourteen at most, straightened the strict knot of his tie as he approached. He stared hard at Diego, stuck both hands in the pockets of—Klaus narrowed his eyes, but, no, they were still clearly schoolboy uniform shorts. “So this is your guy?”

“He’s not—Klaus, this is Five.” 

"Is he— _Jesus_.” Klaus' hand flew up to his face, fingertips gingerly rubbing his cheekbone where it smarted and stung from being sneak-smacked by the hacky sack Five flung at him. "What the—"

"You were supposed to move it off course, dummy." Five extended a hand towards Diego, which was cute, it was goddamned adorable, actually, that he seemed to believe he had the slimmest, slightest chance of getting back his little toy-cum-weapon. "Give me that."

Leashed anger held sway over Diego's face. Darkened the eyes he focused on Five. Without looking, he threw the misshapen ball into the fire and, pointing at Five, snarled, "Do something like that again and—"

Inexplicably in possession of a nasty-looking knife— _Where the hell had it come from?_  Klaus wondered, attempting to visually pat the kid down—Five stabbed the thing in Klaus' direction. "What is coddling him going to accomplish, Diego? Hmm? He either has telekinetic abilities or he doesn't. Time doesn't deal in making delusions reality."

"My gosh, you're a real—" Klaus blinked, frowning at the empty spot Five had filled out seconds before. He was vaguely aware of what appeared to be a large blue bubble popping in his peripheral, but then he saw it, the knife, and it was like the store all over again, only the blade was arcing through the air towards—“ _Diego_ ," Klaus yelped, shaking off a momentary panic-induced paralysis to dive forward, to shove his hands out—

"And so he does." Smug smile in place, Five strolled over to the sofa on the far side of the room, yanked his stupid knife out of a cushion coughing up its stuffing. "At least when his boyfriend's skin is on the line." Once again brandishing the knife at Klaus, he said, "Work that out. Any power that's restricted to a single scenario is all but useless. Also, see if you can manage it without the hand gesture. It's an unmissable tell."

Before Klaus was able to bite out a scathing expletive-laced response, Five disappeared in another one of those space-warping blue bubbles.

"Klaus." Diego reached for him. To take Klaus' shaking hand, maybe, to lace their fingers together and anchor him to a sharply tilting world. "I'm—"

"Five said he actually did it. That he really is telekinetic." Luther bypassed Klaus and Diego, knelt down in front of the gouged couch. "We'll need to see about getting this fixed."

A young man leaning against one of the room's marble columns snorted. "Excellent timing, Luther, as always."

Klaus' laugh was about as steady as his hands, but—"Right?"

The man startled, both arms dropping away from where he’d folded them tightly across his black leather coat-clad chest. He took a tentative step or two closer to Klaus. "You can see me?"

"An odd question, but I'll allow it. Yes," Klaus told him, "I can see you. Wh—"

Luther had swapped the thin tank for a thinner t-shirt, and as he’d lumbered over to stand between them, instead of the cute, gobsmacked guy making desperate eye contact with Klaus, he was faced with the phases of the moon and the clear impression of perky nipples. "Who are you talking to?”

The look on Diego’s face, when Klaus checked, was pensive. It was uncanny levels of unfair how sexy that—

“ _Klaus_.”

“Hmm?”

“Who,” Luther repeated, “were you talking to?”

“Tell them it’s Ben.”

Klaus borrowed a minute trying to read the title of the book shoved in the guy’s pocket. The spine was split by cracks, the paper peeling off in places, the top corner bursting with dogears. “If I do, will you tell me what you’re reading?” The guy smiled and nodded, and Klaus said to Luther, to Diego, “Ben. He said his name is—“

"That's not funny." Luther turned on Diego. "It's bad enough you—“

“For the love of—Not this again.” Klaus inserted himself between the two men, slapped a hand over a waxing gibbous, a pebble-hard nipple, and glared up and up at a face mottled with shades of anger and accusation. “If you think Diego—“

"Of course he did. He's always—"

"What, Luther, huh,” Diego’s breath was a flame on Klaus’ chilled skin, his voice resonating with menace, the potent threat in that quiet, subterranean tone raising an entire battlefield of bumps along the column of Klaus’ throat, “what am I always doing?" 

“I don’t think they’d actually kill each other,” Ben said, “but if you don’t want your boyfriend to be up on murder charges, you might—“

“You’d bet on Diego in that fight.” Klaus grinned, swallowed back a moan when the man in question palmed Klaus’ hip, fingers flexing, kneading. _God_ , when had he gotten that hand beneath—“M-me too.”

“That actually wasn’t what I wanted you to take from that.”

Diego pressed forward, put his mouth to Klaus’ ear, and lowly asked, “What is Ben saying?”

“You really can’t see him? Hear him?”

“That’s right.”

“But you believe I—“

“Yeah. I do.” Diego squeezed Klaus’ hip. Stroked his thumb over bone. “Now what’s he saying?”

“Well, you’ll need to picture a dusty deserted street. Are we there? Good. It’s high noon, prime duel to the death time, and there’s the big guy here at one end, you on the other.” Klaus leaned back against Diego’s chest. “Cementing my opinion of his superior intellect, Ben also knows Luther wouldn’t stand a chance against you, meine Liebe.”

“Eh, close enough,” Ben said—and Klaus didn’t miss his smirk, small as it was—while Luther mutely spluttered. “You might want to add the part about—“

“What is this?” Five asked from somewhere behind Luther’s bulk. “Never mind, I don’t care, just do me a favor and take it up to one of the bedrooms.”

“ _Wh_ —Like I would—“ Luther shuddered, and Klaus' urge to slap the man silly returned tenfold. "Klaus here is supposedly talking to Ben.”

“Is he?” Five cocked his head. “Ask him for the title of the last book we argued over.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Tell him Nabokov’s insistence doesn’t make it so.”

“Insistence on what?”

“Beetle or cockroach.”

“How is this getting weirder?” Klaus mirrored the caustic arch of Five's eyebrow. “Ben said Nabokov’s insistence doesn’t make it so, and whatever _it_ is, I guess, has something to do with a beetle or cockroach.”

“Huh.” When paired with Five's deep-dish dimple, Klaus figured there were two ways to interpret that single word: The kid was either impressed, or he was waiting for an opportunity to hit Klaus with chloroform, to plop him down on a petri dish in some lab, where he could be observed, poked and prodded to Five's heart's content. Given the previous, oh, fifteen minutes _and the knife_ , Klaus was inclined to brace for the latter. "Not just telekinetic then. I dislike the term medium, but until we know if you can do more than just see and speak to the dead, I hesitate to use—“

“Excuse me?” Klaus peeled wide eyes away from Ben to Five. “The dead?”

“Yes. The dead. We lost Ben—He's been gone a long time. Over a decade. Honestly, Klaus," Five all but sneered, "you didn’t wonder why—“

“No…Well, yes, I just…I thought…” _What?_ Klaus scraped at his lip, teeth tugging, pressing shallow pinpricks of pain into that thin layer of skin. The fire was putting off heat enough to speckle the living with sweat—a rivulet ran down Diego's temple, the slick trail ignored as he moved closer, ducking his head, trying to catch the anxious drop of Klaus' gaze—but Klaus, _Christ_ , he was cold. Wracked by a ceaseless shiver that, as he backed away, saw his hip connect with the corner of a long, artifact-bearing table. That sent a probably priceless box crashing to the floor.

"It's nothing. Forget it." Diego crouched, picked up the box, set it back in place. He followed Klaus step by step, those gorgeous brown eyes a beacon. A sanctuary. But he seemed so far away, farther than the exit, and—"Klaus, you wanna go, that's fine, I'll come with you. We can go anywhere you want. Maybe to that park you told me about, the one with—"

"No, I—Dave. I need Dave." Klaus saw it, saw Diego's stare dim and shutter, but he nodded. Just like that, no questions asked, which was good, which was perfect, because Klaus' throat was thick and tight, and he wouldn't have been able to force the words out. To explain a damn thing. Because that whole time at the hospital, all those people Klaus had talked to while Dave was—"He died." Remembering, a breath tore out of Klaus' lungs, quick and hard, the unexpected loss of it practically doubling him over. "Just...just for a few minutes, Diego, he—And I saw him. In the waiting room. I..."

"I know, but he's alive, baby, Dave pulled through, remember? He's waiting for you at the hospital." Maybe Klaus had stopped backing away, or maybe Diego sped up, but the distance between them was gone, thank Christ, and then Klaus was in Diego's arms, held fast and secure against the broad shield of his chest. Surrounded by Diego's scent, his determined heartbeat, Klaus bunched the black cotton stretched across Diego's back in both hands. "I'll take you to him, okay? But in a minute. Let's find our footing first. Can you take a breath for me, Klaus? You holding it like that is—There we go."

Diego's lips against Klaus' forehead turned the tide. Klaus managed to take a deep and even breath, followed by another, his hands relaxing. Holding instead of clutching. "I need to see Dave, but..."

"What?"

"I can't be without you right now either, if—Is that okay?" Klaus pulled back a smidge. "When we get to the hospital, will you stay, Diego, please?"

"If you want me to," Diego said, "you know I will."

It was soft and brief, the kiss Klaus pressed into the hollow of Diego's throat, and it was met with a careful stillness that allowed Klaus to ease out of Diego's arms. When Klaus took his hand, slotted their fingers together, he might have frowned in apparent confusion, but Diego still didn't move to resist. "Can we go? Now?"

"Ye-yeah." Diego let himself be towed out of the room, but when they saw Grace in the foyer, he squeezed Klaus' hand, redirected their path. "We need to get back to the hospital. The food—"

"I'll take care of it, my darlings."

The short walk to Diego's car was carried out quickly and in weighted silence. Each step Klaus took was dogged by a different face in his thoughts, the people he'd spoken to in the hospital, the _kids_ he'd seen, that woman wandering the hall, all of them wearing signs of trauma that he'd assumed, foolishly, was—

"Hey, look at me."

 Klaus blinked and swiped at his eyes, at the moisture blurring his vision. 

"You said you'd only go if you knew I'd come after you, but you're so far in your head right now, baby, and I can't follow you there." Stark sunlight slanted off the roof of the car, heating the metal to a degree that had to've burned Diego's palm where his hand was splayed open above the passenger side door. "I gotta drive us back, and I need you with me. What do I have to do to—"

In a rush, Klaus said, “But you _can_ follow me there, Diego." He huddled deeper in Diego's coat, aware of Ben hovering nearby, an apology written in the lines of his face, but there was stubbornness there, too, and Klaus knew without a doubt that Ben had every intention of tagging along. To be seen after so long, and heard. "Tell me stories. Tell me anything. Everything about you."

"The drive might not be long enough. I got up to a lot of shit as a kid."

Diego closed the door after Klaus slid in and rounded the back. With one hand on the wheel, the other tangled up with Klaus', Diego didn't hesitate to launch into a story about cake batter and nipple rings and—

"Wait, wait, wait." Klaus shifted on the seat until his line of sight was consumed by Diego's sculpted profile. "Fact or fiction?"

"What?"

"The nipple ring."

Diego glanced over, winked. "Fact, baby. That is an absolute fact."

Groaning, closing his eyes, Klaus thumped his head back against the window. With one lust-igniting image, Klaus realized, Diego had chased every ghost from his head. Made the pressure in his chest loosen, which— _phew_ —because his heartbeat had quickened mere seconds into Diego's story and seemed determined to bust one of Klaus' ribs. Soothing lips tenderized by his teeth, Klaus licked at the lower curve, rasped, "Tell me more."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments and kudos are a writer's lifeblood. I love them! Thrive on them! And I'll thank you wholeheartedly for them! (Honestly, they really do matter a whole lot.)
> 
> I had very much wanted to have this finished in time for KliegoWeek, but as that didn't happen, I hope you've enjoyed the story so far and that you'll be back for the next chapter (and in the meantime, if you'll allow me a moment of brazen self-promotion, I have written [another Kliego fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18576199) and that one is completed).
> 
> The title is a borrowed lyric from Greyson Chance's "Black on Black." The fic's soundtrack so far, however, keeps going back to the eighties. The song on the radio in Griddy's is Richard Marx's "Endless Summer Nights." The song Five plays when Klaus first visits the Academy is Naked Eyes' "Always Something There to Remind Me" (I feel pretty confident about this, that it's one of Five's go-to songs when missing Delores hits him particularly hard).


	2. Chapter 2

"When will Klaus be returning to us?" 

Diego relieved Grace of the heavy weight of the basket she held, the decades-old wicker squawking during the transfer from her hands to his, protesting the dozen or so containers tucked inside. Grace made enough food to feed Dave's entire floor, never mind the three men it was intended for, and it worked in their favor every time: Whatever they didn't pack away, Klaus distributed among the nursing staff. Klaus'd probably scoff at the idea of them being bribes, Grace's homemade cookies, but when visiting hours came and went and they were allowed to stay an hour or two longer, the writing on the wall might as well have been in bold permanent marker.

Prepared to repeat the same vague answer he'd given her the last four times she'd asked, Diego found himself saying instead, "I don't know that he's going to come back here, Grace, not after—"

The pressure of her fingers on Diego's hand was slight but insistent. "He will."

Klaus mentioned the Academy a lot, actually, but after the details of his first visit had come out in ragged fits and starts, after Dave had pulled Klaus into an embrace that absorbed every near-silent sob and sigh, every whispered word, Klaus used the mansion as a setting only, the few rooms he’d seen a backdrop to whatever story he was set on telling. Yeah, Klaus was quick with the jokes, the rapid-fire quips, quicker to respond to something Dave or Diego said with his own laughter.

And then he'd flinch away from someone they couldn't see. 

Despite making a point of paying attention to it, distractions stockpiled in the back of his mind, Diego still lost count of the times Klaus trailed off mid-sentence, his stare skipping over a specific corner of the room. Klaus wouldn't tell them what was there. Wouldn’t explain why, day after day, without fail, he shut Dave's door at three minutes past three o'clock. Once it was closed, though, Klaus would quickly skirt the bed, take his seat and Diego's hand.

Aware of Dave watching, assessing the situation, the first time it happened Diego had tried to unknot their fingers. Tried to move his chair, put a respectful amount of space between him and Klaus. Dave's smile slipped as Klaus pulled and tugged and managed to wrangle Diego's chair back even closer. Before he had a chance to shove it in his pocket, Klaus had a hold on his hand again. Their palms met and the relief—the peace—that washed over Klaus' face was impossible to deny. 

The next day, Diego had his hand out and open before Klaus' ass was fully on his seat.

The day after that, he smoothed the scythe-curved scar on the tip of his thumb over the back of Klaus' hand. Circles. Stars. Umbrellas. Whatever the fuck it was he drew, Klaus hummed over it, delighted.

If that's what it took—Diego's hand in Klaus', some kind of constant touch, a scrap of skin on skin—and since he hadn’t said a fucking word about it, if Dave was willing to allow—

"Diego, dear, the door."

The next knock that sounded was barely louder than the first. Klaus’ knuckles were poised to try again when Diego got there, got it open. "Klaus? What—Is Dave—"

"In the hands of a delightful physical therapist named Igor? Good guess." Klaus hesitated, swaying back on his heels. "Is it—Can I come in?"

"Yeah, of course." Diego hastily stepped back. "Luther's here, so if you wanna go somewhere else—"

"I want to figure it out," Klaus said, "the telekinesis thing. The dead thing—Ben says hi, by the way—I would scrape that ability out with a spoon—sorry, Ben—but the only way I'm getting rid of it now, I think, is if I died too, or—"

Diego’s abdominal muscles—all of his goddamned muscles—clenched as he bit out, "That's not happening, Klaus."

Klaus shrugged, and there was no mistaking the movement, not that time, Diego realized, because Klaus wasn't wearing his coat. Or any one of Diego's sweaters Klaus had claimed for his own. There was nothing, not a thing, obscuring the many miles of skin on display beneath Klaus' collarbones and all down the side of his long legs, where thin crisscrossed leather strips stood in for thread to hold his pants together.

“It’s safe and sound in Dave’s room.”

Diego dragged his eyes up. "Wh-wh—"

“My coat." Klaus sauntered over to peek in the basket, pulled out a container filled to the lid with thick-cut brownies. "Ben has a theory, see, he thinks I'd have to outrun the ghosts to shake off the cold. Literally or metaphorically, that's not about to happen, now is it. _So_. Best get used to it is my motto." 

"Grace's got a fire going in the—"

"Oh, thank fuck,” Klaus said and tore off for the stairs. His sneakers slapped every other board, two fingertips sprinting up the bannister, defying splinters where the wood split around blackened knots. He covered the foyer in balletic leaps and pirouettes, and Diego smiled, watching as four day’s worth of pent-up energy was expended on the marble floor. Sweeping the doors open, Klaus reached back, grabbed Diego’s hand and pulled him inside the library. “Pick something, anything.”

“What’s the plan?” Diego asked, looking around. All the shit scattered across tables, littering the shelves, it was mostly large and heavy. “You just gonna try to move it? You want me to throw it?”

Dropping to his knees in front of a couch, Klaus seemed to shove his entire arm between the cushions. He bounced back up brandishing a gold fountain pen. “We’ll start small. Here,” he said, handing off the pen, folding Diego’s fingers over the smooth barrel, “step back a bit. Throw it like you mean it.”

“Where?”

“Well.” Klaus tugged at his shirt, pulling the scooping neckline lower and revealing more of his skin, all of it pale and beckoning, leveling Diego with a desire as undeniable as the sun. “I was thinking…”

His stare fixed somewhere in the vicinity of Klaus’ clavicle, Diego attempted to follow the thread of the conversation, only a memory rolled over him like a current, catching him up in its undertow. He was dragged back into his childhood, to all the times he’d been so goddamn desperate for some kind of reprieve—for one minute of respite from the lash of his adoptive mother’s tongue, from his adoptive father’s backhand and boot—that he’d take off, steal a bike or just run to this abandoned building he’d found blocks away from the shitty, ramshackle house that had taken him in. He’d put his back to a tagged brick wall and each time he thought, that was it, the day he’d do the impossible: hold sunlight in his cupped hands. And then he’d take that it back, keep it with him behind the door they’d lock whenever—But it never worked out, and when he finally went inside, he found all these bright shafts sifting through wide holes in the roof, saturating the grimy floor with warm, impenetrable puddles he’d step into anyway, lifting his face to let the light touch his mouth, his throat, the veins at his wrists that tunneled into the bruises there. Unlike water and the sliver of soap he was allowed, it made him feel clean, that light, made him feel—

“Diego?” Klaus was closer than Diego remembered him being, and he was frowning. Waving. “Hi, hello, where did you disappear to, and unless you bring me with you next time, can you please not go there again?”

Rolling his shoulders, Diego shrugged off his piss-poor youth in favor of the present and the bright and beautiful man waiting on him—a man he couldn’t hold, not for long, but the vibrant, warming light of Klaus’ company, _that_ he could indulge in. “What did you want me to throw it at?”

His head might’ve been cocked to a curious angle, but all the questions Diego saw crowding around Klaus’ pursed lips remained there, unvoiced. After maybe ten, fifteen seconds, Klaus nodded, letting it go, and backed up several feet until his sneakers were centered in one of the floor's inlaid jade green diamonds. He opened his arms wide. "Me."

Diego had quickly, easily, found the pen’s balance, the right grip to make it an extension of himself, but at that he lowered his arm. “Klaus—“

“You don’t miss, I know, and what is the threat of being mortally wounded if not the best incentive to sort out this little ability of mine, hmm?”

“It’s going over your shoulder.” Diego held up a hand, forestalling the protest that lit Klaus’ eyes before his mouth opened to plead his case. “I’m not risking you getting hurt—“

“No,” Klaus softly interrupted, “you wouldn’t.” His face settled into resolved lines; whatever decision he'd made, Klaus didn't give either of them a chance to dwell on it. "Over my shoulder it is."

The first blade Diego had ever thrown was this steak knife that had a rough wooden handle that scratched worse than sandpaper, a slightly bent tip, and a cutting edge dulled by more than a decade of use. The damage it had done to the side of his father's face, how deeply it had sunk into the wall just behind the man's head, none of it should have been possible, not with that old blade. The knife leaving his hand—everything that came after his father tore it loose—it all went down so fast, there'd been no time to do more than choke out, “ _Sh-shit_ ," before the first blow landed. Over the course of the long, pain-lanced weeks that snapped at the heels of that night—his recovery slowed down by having to carry it out with his own two hands—the only thing Diego had was time, and every fucking minute of it was consumed by thoughts of what he’d done. With the remembered sound of that knife cutting a precise path to the wall.

The day he was fully back on his feet, Diego snuck out with another knife from the set in the back pocket of his jeans. He lined a busted table in his abandoned building with bottles and cans and empty cereal boxes, and realized that not only was that first throw not a fluke, he could do it faster, with more power and unnatural accuracy. 

After that—after he understood what he was capable of—he never held back. Not once, not until right then.

Diego threw the pen. It revolved as smoothly as any one of his blades, the molten barrel scattering dust motes lazily coasting on the air, and narrowly cut over Klaus' shoulder. The conical cap pierced a book’s spine, embedding in the binding.

Klaus blinked like he was coming out of some kind of stupor, out of some kind of deep enthrallment, and then those long black lashes fell like a veil. He prowled over to the shelf. Yanked the pen out of the book’s spine. Bits of paper and clotted glue floated to the floor, forgotten as soon as Klaus turned his heavy-lidded gaze on Diego, the mess pushed out of Diego's mind entirely when Klaus started slowly towards him.

He offered up the pen on the pads of two fingers. “Again. Please.” Klaus leaned in and lifted his eyes. Pupils swollen with hunger, the luminous green of Klaus’ irises were eclipsed by the same heat licking Diego’s nerve endings. “Do you have any idea what you look like when you do that?” A shiver slid across the crest of Klaus’ shoulders. To keep from chasing it, denying the urge to be the cause of another, stronger tremor, Diego fisted both hands. Felt the pen’s clip bite into his palm. “I haven’t come in such a long time, Diego, but watching that, watching you, Christ, I thought I was going to. Untouched. Can you imagine?”

Diego pulled in a deep, shuddering breath, opened his mouth to say...fuck, he didn't know what, but Klaus moved back before he got out a word, leaving them both on the edge of a precipice Diego knew he should step away from. One that, second by second, seemed to be crumbling beneath his feet. Defying every instinct that urged him to go for steady ground, to put Dave's name between them like an uncrossable bridge, Diego stayed where he was, let his gaze dip to skim the second skin of Klaus' pants, pulled taut over—"Harder, Diego. I want to feel it."

His pulse throbbed at his throat, raked at both wrists, responding to the scrape of Klaus' voice. The demand. Diego didn't do a damn thing to calm that pounding rhythm, was distantly aware of baring his teeth, his smile a mirror held up to the predatory curve of Klaus’ lips.

Slicing through air held still as a breath, the pen drew a furious red line on the column of Klaus' throat before momentum impaled the barrel in another book.

Dazedly, Klaus tipped his head to the side. Smoothing his fingers over the thin welt—Diego's mark—on his throat, Klaus moaned. Low, ragged, the sound resonated with pleasure; hearing it, something stirred in Diego's chest. Maybe he couldn't name it, not on the spot, but whatever it was, Diego had to admit it had been straining against its leash for a long, long time.

He took an unconscious step forward, inaudibly growled when his boot connected with the belly of a taxidermied prairie dog, the fucking thing out of place and pulling him up short, shifting his focus. "What the—"

"That...that would be my fault." Klaus knelt unsteadily to retrieve it, flicking a front paw before shoving the animal towards its final resting place at the back of the narrow table. "My aim clearly isn't up to snuff. Unlike yours." Plucking up the peacock feather laid out in front of a pair of urns, Klaus pulled it through the chamber of his closed hand. "You held back that time, too."

Diego shrugged, deciding there was no reason to cop to it when Klaus stood unshakable on the point. Instead, he met Klaus' insight with one of his own. "And you weren't trying to move the pen."

Klaus gave up a delighted grin. "Not even a little bit, but I also wasn't trying to catch that little fella with my party trick." He brushed silken plumes against his left cheek, shook out the quill to shimmy the iridescent tips through a stream of sunlight. Gazing at the rich greens and golds glinting from the dark purple bed of the feather's eye, he said, "This _seemed_ like the easier mark."

"Try again." Diego indicated the chess board Five left on the floor with a glance. "Move the queen.”

At that command, Klaus’ eyes fluttered shut. His skin flushed a color to rival vicious sunsets, satin bedding, the blood on Diego’s knuckles come most mornings. He swayed a bit, sighed when his body hit the barrier of Diego’s chest. Concentration covered Klaus’ expression in minute increments until he was gnawing on his lip, wrinkling his nose, and then Diego’s eyes widened as he watched the entire chess board lift and pick up speed with every rotation. Pawns and rooks flew and fell, rolling under chairs, the sofa. A pair of knights smashed against the wall, while the white bishop burned in the fire.

But it wasn’t until they were spinning, dancing at a distance of no more than an arm's length away that Diego noticed them, the queens.

Klaus opened his eyes, crooked a finger. The queens shook some, suspended in midair, and slunk forward to drop onto Klaus’ waiting hand. “Holy fucking Christ, Diego, it worked," Klaus breathed, "I did it.” He looked up from the black and white pieces balanced on his palm, considered all the others scattered across the floor, a couple of them in chalky pieces. “Was Five winning that match? Please tell me he wasn’t. Currently, he knows where I sleep.”

“He’ll get over it.” Diego took advantage of Klaus' preoccupation with the decimated chess set to study his throat, the mark there. It had to sting, and before long Diego knew it would ache with bruises, ones that would draw from a palette of dark colors to paint Klaus' pulse point. "Klaus, I'm—"

"You're sorry, and you shouldn't be. I wanted it."

"But—"

"That it's hurting you more than it is me," Klaus shook his head slightly, sincerely, "means everything to me, it does, Diego, but it's not—I'm not a lamb happy to wait for the slaughter, you know." With his empty hand, Klaus took one of Diego's, raised it to press his fingertips to skin burning with injury. "I wouldn't have stood there if I didn't trust the wolf, if I didn't know he valued my life."

Diego laughed but it was quiet, contained. If he spared a minute to think about it he might say it held as much pleasure as Klaus' moan had, just of a different kind. "We've known each other how many days?"

"Does it matter?" They were maybe a foot apart—close enough for Diego to map the location of two moles shielded by the stubble spotting Klaus' jawline; to pick out the thorns in the garden-green of his irises, these dark gold flecks that curved and narrowed at the tip—but Klaus rid them of even that brief distance. "Am I wrong?"

"No," Diego soothed the welt beneath his thumb, kept his touch light, kept it gentle, "you're not wrong, baby."

Klaus leaned in so they were cheek to cheek, whispered, "I knew it," like it was a secret, or a confession, like it carried more weight than three simple words should. "How much longer are you going to make me wait?"

"For what?" Diego asked, hushed.

"This," Klaus murmured, and turned his head so their mouths met, his next breath shared between them. “Please, Diego. Kiss me."

Diego groaned, winding his arms around Klaus' lower back, hauling him in, holding him close. The kiss kindled quickly, too quick to stop it, the scorching heat behind it building the longer their lips clung, slanting to taste, to tease, but never, not for a moment parting. Diego swallowed Klaus' gasp, the yearning sound he made, and—

"What the hell?"

Diego knew his lips had shifted into a snarl even before he pulled back to turn a dagger-sharp glare on Luther. Or where he thought Luther must’ve stood, because there was no telling for sure, no way for Diego to see Luther or anything else through the tall cyclone of books and loose sheets of paper furiously churning around him and Klaus. 

"Baby, are you—"

"I didn't mean to," Klaus said, a tendril of panic unfurling in his voice. "Shit, Diego, I swear—"

"Hey, it's fine, okay, nothing to—"

"Nothing to worry about? Christ, if this is what happens when we kiss," Klaus reached out hesitantly, maybe to poke a book, see if it would fall, “when we have sex, we're going to have to find an open field."

"Are you two all right in there?" Luther called. "Can't you stop it?"

"I'm trying," Klaus volleyed back. "You're not helping."

Diego ran his palms up and down the chilled skin of Klaus' biceps. "You made the queens drop right into your hand, Klaus, they did exactly what you wanted them to do."

"Yeah, but I wasn't taking notes." Pushing back into place curls stirred into disorder by the cyclone's wind, Klaus raked a hand through his hair, tugged at the strands. "Gosh dang it, Klaus, figure it out," he muttered, steadying himself in Diego's hold, "you told Dave you'd be back before the next ice age.”

"Dave," Diego repeated, his thoughts catching up to his actions, finally, and it was like the man stepped into the room, shoved straight through the chaos to catch Diego’s solar plexus with brass knuckles. Dropping his hands, Diego shifted as far away from Klaus as the revolving wall of books would allow. What the _fuck_ had he been thinking, kissing Klaus when—"I'll tell him. Say I kissed you, that it's on me.”

Klaus' one-sided smile was tentative. He searched Diego's face, and the cyclone slowed. "Why would you—"

"He's a good man, Klaus. One of the best I've met," Diego said, and meant it. "He'll understand."

"That's true, I mean, I know he is. It's why I—"

"Whatever you're doing, I think it's working," Luther said, and when Diego turned his head, yeah, he could finally make out Luther's bulk, the NASA shirt stretched over his chest. "Five's going to be pissed he missed this."

"Diego," Klaus said, softly, the step he took to regain their earlier closeness having the opposite effect when Diego jerked back. Confusion and hurt blurred Klaus' expression. The sight of it—the knowledge that he put it there—filled Diego's chest with something like dry static, a pressure so tight he could hardly fucking breathe. All at once, the books teetered and trembled, plummeted to the floor. Sheets of papers swayed from side to side on a depleted current of air before falling to rest on the nearest flat surface. Klaus didn't look at the debris, his questioning stare fixed on Diego's face. "What did I do?"

"Nothing, ba—Klaus. You didn't do a damn thing."

Luther's amused snort cut off whatever Klaus had been about to say. "Have fun cleaning this up."

"If you're not going to pitch in, leave. _Now_ ,” Diego told him and wasn't surprised in the least to see Luther actually make good on that order, shaking his head as he lumbered out of the devastated room. Diego kept his gaze trained on Luther's back, but said to Klaus, "Don't worry about this, I've got it. You okay with getting back to the hospital on your own?"

"As luck would have it, I pulled on my big boy panties this morning." Klaus inhaled, and Diego heard how it shook. "This is my accidental doing, my mess, I'll clean it up. Not to mention Dave's not actually expecting me any time soon."

"F-fine." Diego forced a deep breath into the strict confines of his lungs. It shook as bad as Klaus' had. "I'm gonna go f-find a broom."

He'd almost made it to the doorway when Klaus softly called, "You didn't do anything wrong either."

Diego huffed a humorless laugh, stayed where he was, facing the shadow-stricken foyer. "Yeah, well, I doubt Dave would agree."

"Clearly you only eavesdropped that one time, huh? Otherwise you'd know that Dave has been pushing me to produce little ones since the day I met you. Or, no, that's not quite right. He was, after all, unconscious most of that day, but as soon as he woke up, yeah. Yes. And after he laid eyes on you? After he got to know you? Jesus, it was nonstop. Diego's gorgeous, Klaus. Your babies will be ridiculously beautiful, Klaus. Uncle Dave wants to babysit, Klaus, so get to it, chop chop. Rest assured," Klaus said, "Dave will be thrilled to hear we're one step closer to making his dreams a reality."

Turning, slowly, Diego met Klaus' open and watchful eyes. "What?"

"That's not the response I expected, honestly, but if you can give me just a little more to work with, I'll happily provide."

“You’re telling me your boyfriend's thrilled about you having another man’s kids?”

"First of all, that you went along with that, sparing me the men can't have babies, Klaus, lecture—Actually, I already knew I chose well, that didn't need cementing, but you did it anyway." Klaus held up a finger, said, "Side note, you better believe future Klaus and future Diego are going to have a talk about kids and adoption. We're going to tackle every one of the nine yards, whatever those are. Maybe hurdle a white picket fence while we’re at it.” Eliminating the stretch of flooring between them, Klaus shuffled around several books, took care with the paper he couldn't avoid. “Second, I adore Dave, I absolutely do, and I'll be in his life for as long as he'll have me, Diego, but as a friend. A brother in arms, as he'd probably say, not that I've held a gun since that one time—"

"Klaus," Diego rasped, his heartbeat thickening, drowning out the sound of his own voice, "if you and Dave aren't together—“

“We’re not, not like that, and I…I know we haven’t said as much, Diego, so maybe I shouldn’t have…but I thought _we_ were together. Maybe?” Lifting Diego’s hand to his lips, Klaus kissed the peaks of four knuckles capped by a dusting of scars. “Are we?”

There was a grandfather clock somewhere in the Academy. Diego hadn’t ever come across the thing, never passed it by on his way to one of the spare bedrooms; he only really knew it was a fixture by its hourly tolling, by the time it kept in jerky ticks and clicks. No matter where Diego was in the place it could be heard, and right then, standing at the outskirts of the library, he kept the clock’s count in the back of his head as he waded through the realization that, shit, yeah, all those times he’d seen Klaus kiss Dave, touch him, the intent had been sweet and light. Glancing. Nothing like the hot and hungry press of Klaus’ mouth against Diego’s. The urgent, branding grip of Klaus’ hands on Diego’s nape and hip. Nothing like the needful noise Klaus had made before they broke apart to find themselves in the center of a desire-fueled storm.

“Diego? Say something.”

Diego licked lips that tasted like Klaus, and moved, the length of his body urging Klaus’ back, back to brace against a marbled column. His head lowered, his open mouth whispering warmly over his mark on Klaus’ throat, Diego gave his next words to it. “Yeah, baby,” he murmured, absorbing Klaus’ shiver at the sound, “we are.”

* * *

“Here we are,” Klaus needlessly looped an arm around Dave’s back to help him straighten out of the backseat of Diego’s car, “home sweet sprawling home.”

From the sidewalk, Dave quietly studied the black iron gate, the brick-rich facade and frosted-glass front doors of the Academy. “You’re sure—“

“Positively.” Klaus grinned. “As sure as Diego was that you and I were lovers.” 

“Enough with that,” Diego growled, but then he gently gripped Klaus’ chin, stole a soft, swift kiss, and the bite in his tone felt like nothing more than a playful nip. “If Five willingly offered up rooms, trust that he looked at every side of the equation and was good with the outcome.”

Dave wordlessly accepted that reassurance and followed Diego up the concrete steps, into the mansion.

Trailing behind his men, Klaus watched Diego direct Dave’s attention to sights of interest along the way. Suits of armor Five had reassembled after dismantling each one to pry out the cameras his father had made their iron throats swallow. Dark cherry wood paneling hiding rooms that, like the very best secrets, came in various sizes and different threat levels. A gilt-framed painting of thick white smoke suspended in front of a series of mirrors. That one, when Diego had shown it to him, swung the painting back on unseen hinges to reveal a spine-like passageway, Klaus had been quick to move into the dim interior, towing Diego behind him. They hadn’t made it very far, though, before they heard moaning—Luther choking on Allison’s name, jacking off with gusto in the room beyond the wall—and the look on Diego’s face, Klaus had bit his tongue until blood was drawn and even then he’d only just managed to lash his laughter to his ribs so it didn’t spill out.

The abbreviated tour moved on from there, and Klaus followed, drifting in the wake of Diego’s voice. Halfway between floors, he found Ben perched on a carpeted step. “Hey there,” he cooed, “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you for—has it really been over a week now? Closer to two? Which simply begs the question, Ben, my dear, who have you been haunting if not me?”

“It turns out in death as in life, I’m just not a fan of extreme weather conditions.” Ben zipped his jacket all the way up to his grin. “I thought it best to steer clear of tornado alley for a little while.”

“Alas,” Klaus sighed, “Diego and I haven’t had another chance to whip up a second cyclone. May this drought season quickly come to an end, that’s the sum of my bedtime prayers, let me tell you.”

“Five told me Diego’s been pitching in with Dave’s physical therapy.” Ben rightly interpreted Klaus’ cocked eyebrow as a request for an explanation and added, “Now that he knows I’m still around, he talks sometimes. He gets surprisingly chatty after four cups of coffee.” Ben shrugged and stood, Klaus thought, to shift Klaus’ focus off his sheepish smile. “It’s nice.” 

“Well, I’ll be around now, if you ever want to say something back.”

“Thanks.” With his hands sheltered in either pocket, Ben started down the stairs. “If you wouldn’t mind doing something else for me, when it looks like a weather event could be on the horizon, maybe put a sock or Diego’s harness on the doorknob.”

Klaus waited until Ben vanished to continue the trek upstairs, approaching each hallway like it was a busy street, peeking left then right, left again, just in case, until he saw Diego exiting the bedroom Dave must have claimed. 

Diego closed the nondescript door with care and tipped his head towards it. “He’s doing good, real good, but all this…It’s a lot. He might need a few to find his bearings.”

Taking Diego’s hand, Klaus’ thoughts strayed to the cloud-covered afternoon Five had cornered him in the kitchen. The kid’s sudden, blue-tinted appearance forced Klaus’ elbow into a rather nasty encounter with the fridge, jarring loose a yelp, a colorful curse, and Five’s resultant smirk put Klaus’ instincts on high alert, made him want to scurry off to lick his wounds elsewhere, preferably from the safety of Diego’s lap. As if the collision hadn’t been bad enough, the kid had looked Klaus over, collarbone to hipbone, the glacial lines of his face thawing, softening.

“Diego will show you the spare bedrooms. I don’t care which ones you and Dave take,” Five had said, evenly, “but you should know Luther snores loud enough for his precious astronauts to hear out of orbit, and Grace runs her sewing machine whenever the hell she feels like it, usually well after midnight.” He paused to straighten his tie, to perhaps give Klaus an opening to release the breath he’d obviously been holding. “Terms of the lease are as follows, Klaus, so listen up. You can stay for as long as you want, rent free, on the condition that you keep all evidence of your sex life out of my sight and keep your hands off my coffee. I’ll have keys made for you and Dave. Welcome home.”

His new and frankly terrifying landlord popped off to parts unknown before Klaus could so much as nod to seal the deal, never mind find anything like those bearings Dave was currently playing hide and seek with. Knowing the feeling, then, Klaus would gladly give Dave all the time he needed to adjust to their immeasurably improved situation.

“Baby?”

Klaus pulled himself out of the memory, registered the way Diego was looking at him, with caution and concern. He squeezed Diego’s hand, tugged him down the hallway to the bedroom Klaus had picked out. Large enough for two people to settle into comfortably, the room was sunlit, dappled in a prism of colors, and already draped in Diego’s clothes: all of the sweaters Klaus had claimed, the coat he had every intention of wearing until the seams ripped, unraveled. And just like the man easing open the windows to let in furnace-hot air, every beautiful inch of it was Klaus’.

Gazing out on the courtyard below, Diego said, “Whatever else you need, Five said to just get it. He left an envelope with Grace, cash, probably—“

“Right at this moment,” Klaus joined Diego at the window, braced the heels of his hands on the sash so he could lean out, look at the brilliant blue of the horizon, “I could really use a sock.”

Diego cocked his head. “What for?”

“The doorknob, per Ben’s request for advance warning of imminent storms.” Klaus tiptoed his fingers up Diego’s chest to circle his pulse, to find his lips slick and open. “Shall we settle for a microburst or unleash an EF5?” 

His eyes darkening, his expression sharp as hunger, Diego gestured to the mostly open space. “You’re already home, so—“

“Go hard, it is, my love.” The black leather of Diego’s belt was sleek and smooth, worn to a suppleness that made the length of it slip free of every loop with one slow but insistent pull. Klaus let it fall to the floor at their feet, thumbed the button on Diego’s pitch black denim. “If you hold back this time, so help me—“

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That ending, it wasn’t mean, was it? Perhaps it was, a little, _but_ …A few things unexpectedly knuckled their way into this portion of the fic, and it occurred to me there might be more to explore within this AU. That said, shifting back to this one, I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please do let me know. Thanks for reading!


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